A Different Life

This articulate, frank, entertaining memoir of growing up with a profound developmental and learning disability-by the son of long-time "Washington Post" Executive Editor Ben Bradlee and bestselling author Sally Quinn - will inspire everyone who has or deals with learning differences.Quinn Bradlee was diagnosed with VCFS, a syndrome that affects 1 in 2000 individuals but which stealthily masks itself with 180 symptoms that range from scoliosis to susceptibility to schizophrenia. (VCFS is the result of a submicroscopic deletion of a tiny segment of DNA on the 22nd chromosome that happens randomly in an instant during recombination in sexual cell reproduction). "A Different Life" is a revealing portrait of growing up battling the physical, mental, and social challenges presented by a sometimes debilitating and almost always demanding disorder, and a poignant confessional of the experience of growing up with such limitations as the son of incredibly accomplished and famous parents.From detailing his cringe-worthy loss of sexual innocence, to delineating the difficulties he experiences reading social cues, Quinn opens a door into his world-one in which he constantly questions what, exactly, is normal.
At turns funny and saddening, Bradlee's memoir is a poignant rumination on the loneliness of being different, and at the same time, the indisputable joy he experiences in life. A balanced portrait that is optimistic without being Polly-annish, "A Different Life" deftly plumbs the depths of living in a different sort of house. Both benefiting and complicating Quinn's experience are his parents': two larger than life figures who can make things happen for their son, but whose long shadows also threaten to occlude him.